Crime School

CHAPTER 6

They were exiles now, locked out of the room. This was Heller’s punishment for breaking a commandment of Forensics: Thou shalt not disturb my freaking crime scene.

The detectives’ walk-through had turned into a run-through, battling fat black insects on the wing and biting back vomit all the way to a rear window that had not been dusted for prints. Now Mallory sat outside on the steps of the fire escape, keeping her partner company. The air was sweeter here, but muggy and almost too thick to breathe. The sun was hot, the day was dead calm, and cigarette smoke hung about Riker in a stale cloud.

On the other side of the locked window, most of the insects were still trapped in the apartment. Their buzzing penetrated the glass, loud and incessant. A ripe corpse had emptied its bowels postmortem, attracting every blowfly in the neighborhood and adding to the odor of putrid flesh.

Mallory looked down through the metal grate. More civilians had joined the gathering below. There was nothing to see, but New York was a theater town, and the yellow crime-scene tape was the cue to form a sidewalk gallery. Last week, the killer had probably stood on that same patch of pavement. After calling the reporters to his crime scene, he would have stayed to watch them enter this building, then leave, unimpressed with his work. ‘I wonder how long the perp waited for the cops to show. Hours? Days?’

‘Must’ve driven him nuts.’ Riker took a drag on his cigarette. ‘I’ve got uniforms canvassing the block. We might get lucky.’

No, Mallory doubted that they would turn up any witnesses who recalled a man loitering on the sidewalk. Too much time had passed between the death and the discovery of the corpse.

Riker flicked his cigarette over the rail of the fire escape. ‘I wonder if we’ll find any more bodies, maybe a few in worse shape.’

‘Not likely. Janos said there were only two calls on the Cashtip line.’ And despite the killer’s telephoned confession and a reporter’s visit to the local police station, Kennedy Harper’s body had been left to rot for six days in the heat of August. ‘He must’ve figured the cops just weren’t paying attention.’

‘Well, he got that part right,’ said Riker. ‘And now we know why he burned Sparrow’s window shade. Hard to miss a woman hanging in full view of the street. He wanted a guaranteed audience for his second show.’

Heller stood on the other side of the glass, raising the sash. ‘Okay, all the windows are open, and the worst of the stink is gone. You two delicate little pansies can come back inside.’

Without being asked, the tenants kept their distance from the stench of the crime scene. They were gathered at the other end of a long hallway, where Ronald Deluthe questioned a man with greasy coveralls. A large cluster of keys dangled from his utility belt.

‘You’re the building handyman, the super?’

‘Good guess, kid.’

Deluthe could translate that to mean Who else would I be, you moron? Not a promising beginning for his first interview of the day, but he pressed on. ‘So a body is rotting away for maybe a week, but you never smelled anything? He paused a moment to flick a fly off his face. ‘Nobody complained?’ An army of insects walked up the walls, and some were strolling across the ceiling.

The high-pitched whine of a woman chimed in behind the detective’s back. ‘Oh, we complained all right! You think this lazy slob would take six minutes to check it out?’

The far door opened and Mallory stepped into the hall in time to catch the handyman demonstrating a New York gesture for love and friendship, his middle finger extended from a closed fist.

‘Harper got new locks!’ The man edged closer to the whining tenant so he could yell in her face, ‘And I got no keys for ‘em! You want I should break down her damn door?’

At the other end of the hall, Mallory called out to Deluthe, ‘Chase down the locksmith. Find out when he was here.’

‘Oh, I can tell you that.’ The handyman’s keys jangled as he turned to flash a lewd grin at the pretty detective. ‘It was two weeks ago. I watched him do the work.’ His eyes undressed Mallory layer by layer, removing her blazer, her T-shirt, her bra.

And now he was the focus of her attention. ‘Was Kennedy Harper home that day?’

‘Yeah.’ His eyes traveled all over her body. ‘So?’

The detective’s long legs were encased in blue jeans, but in the handyman’s eyes, they were naked. He looked up, suddenly startled. She was moving toward him with long strides and swinging a camera from its strap like a weapon.

Ronald Deluthe wondered if she was only pissed off, or had he missed something – again.

Mallory stood toe-to-toe with the man in coveralls. ‘You had keys to the other locks.’ This was an accusation.

‘Sure. I got keys for the whole building.’

That was so obvious. The buckle on the man’s utility belt sagged from the weight of his keys, each one tagged with an apartment number. And now Deluthe waited for some caustic comment from the witness, but the handyman kept a respectful silence, for Mallory stood with one hand on her hip, exposing the shoulder holster and a very large gun. Her eyes were even more intimidating. Did she ever blink? She took two quick steps toward the handyman, who had nowhere to go but flat up against the wall.

‘Why don’t you have the new keys? You were here with the locksmith. Harper was home that day.’

‘I asked for ‘em. She wouldn’t give ‘em to me.’

Mallory looked down at the cluster of tags and metal hanging in front of the man’s crotch. He squirmed when she reached for it.

‘You’ve still got the old ones.’ Mallory stared at the key tag for apartment 4B. ‘You had access before she changed the locks.’

‘And she had no problem with that.’ He was a model citizen now, eager to help and talking fast. ‘Five years and no complaints. Then one day, out of the blue, I’m a suspicious character. She can’t trust me with her damn keys. Go figure.’ He turned to Deluthe. ‘Don’t write that down, kid.’

Deluthe folded his notebook into a pocket, then took out his Miranda card to read the prime suspect his rights. ‘You have the right to remain – ’

‘What are you doing?’ Mallory took his card away, then handed him the camera. ‘We’re done with this man. Go outside and take pictures.’

Deluthe nodded. He was growing accustomed to humiliation and busywork. The killer had no way to know that the body had been discovered, not this time. He would not be among the onlookers. This was Mallory’s way of telling him, once again, to get lost.

Riker stood near the kitchenette, where the odor was strongest. He stared at the jar of dead flies on the floor, then counted exactly two dozen saucers, each one containing the melted remnants of a red candle. They formed a perfect circle, and at the center lay Kennedy Harper’s remains. She had a noose around her neck, and the double knot was the same as Sparrow’s, but this woman had not been found hanging. The light fixture had come loose, and the body had crashed to the floor long before the police arrived. A broken bulb and a shattered white globe lay close to a nest of wires pulled down from the hole in the ceiling. The corpse at his feet was bloated with gas, and the face was partially concealed by shards of broken plaster. Only one eye, clotted with white dust, was visible. It had retracted into its socket.

Or the maggots had eaten it.

Riker turned away, wondering if this woman had been as pretty as Sparrow. He hunkered down on the floor in front of the kitchenette sink and picked up her wallet with his gloved hand. Opening it, he stared at the photograph on her driver’s license. Yes, she had been very pretty, but Kennedy Harper had borne no resemblance to Sparrow beyond the hacked-off hair of another scalping. He set the wallet on the floor, positioned as he had found it among the spilled contents of a purse. He moved to one side to allow a crime-scene technician room to dust the jar of dead, dry flies. Even before the man shook his head, Riker knew there would be no fingerprints.

The detective looked up to see Heller standing by the door with a uniformed officer and signing a receipt for an armload of garments in clear plastic bags. After ripping the plastic away from one hanger, the criminalist held up a pale green blouse and motioned to Riker. ‘You might wanna look at this.’ Heller turned the blouse around to display a large faded X on the back. Affixed to this stain was the dry cleaner’s We’re-so-sorry sticker.

‘I’ve seen this mark before,’ said Heller, ‘on a shirt I found wadded up under Sparrow’s sink. She used hers for a cleaning rag.’

‘So it’s not a random killing.’ Mallory joined them over the body. ‘We’ve got a stalker.’

‘Yeah,’ said Riker. The Xon the blouse worked nicely with her theory on the new locks installed a week before the murder. ‘He sees the women on the street. Then he marks their shirts to make it easier to follow them home in a crowd – like tagging animals in the wild.’ Unlike Kennedy Harper, Sparrow had not complained about the stalking, the terror. Prostitutes were not given the same service as human beings.

Sparrow, why didn’t you come to me?

The East Side lieutenant had put in a personal appearance instead of sending one of his minions to the crime scene, and Mallory saw this as an admission of guilt for the mistakes made on his watch.

‘I brought her package.’ Lieutenant Loman spoke only to Riker, pretending that Mallory was not in the room. ‘The complaints started a few weeks ago. Some pervert was following the girl.’

After accepting the envelope, Riker pulled out four papers encased in plastic, each bearing the same brief message. Loman was tense, almost standing at attention, and Mallory wondered if this was a habit from the days when Riker had held the rank of captain.

‘Kennedy found those notes in her pockets.’ Loman mopped his bald head and brow with a handkerchief. ‘Pretty harmless stuff.’

Riker responded with a noncommittal nod, then scanned the paperwork attached to the evidence bags.

The lieutenant stared at the stained green blouse draped over the detective’s arm. ‘She brought that into the station house. She said the perp did it on the subway. You should find a T-shirt marked up the same way. And the notes – every time she found one in her pocket, she’d been in a crowd of people – the subway, a store. That’s why Kennedy never got a good look at the guy.’

Mallory noted the use of the victim’s first name. It was common for homicide detectives to speak of the dead with this familiarity; but Loman’s squad had only known Kennedy Harper as a living woman, one civilian complainant out of thousands. She stared at the man in silent accusation.

You turned that woman into a pet, didn’t you?

The lieutenant avoided Mallory’s eyes while he waited for Riker to say something – anything. ‘She never saw the perp’s face. What could we do?’

‘Did you put an extra patrol on this street?’

And now the lieutenant was forced to acknowledge Mallory, for Riker looked up from his reading, and he was also showing interest in her question.

‘No,’ said Loman. ‘It was that damn virus. The uniforms were spread too thin for extra patrols.’

Mallory only shook her head. It would be gross insubordination to call him a liar out loud. Kennedy Harper was dead before the virus had grown to an epidemic in this part of town. And Loman’s men had found lots of time to visit with pretty Kennedy Harper. She had even come to the attention of the squad’s commander.

Riker selected one piece of paper with dried blood on it and held it up to the lieutenant’s eyes.

It was a moment before Loman spoke. ‘That was the last note. The perp used a hatpin to nail it into the back of her neck. Kennedy walked into the station house – dripping blood – and the note was still staked to her skin.’

Mallory knew there was only one reason for a victim to go to that extreme: it was the woman’s plea for them to take her seriously – because they never had before.

Riker read the bloodied note aloud: ‘ „I can touch you any time I want.“‘

‘That was the day she snapped,’ said Loman. ‘Told us she was leaving town. Well, we thought that was a real good idea. One of my men got her some coffee and a first-aid kit. I made her plane reservation for Bermuda.’

How kind of you, how helpful.

‘Did you do anything else for her?’

‘Yes!’ Loman turned to Mallory, and he was on the offensive now. ‘The girl was in shock. I got a police escort to take her to the hospital. And then they drove her back home. After that, all she had to do was take a cab to the airport.’

You left her alone.

Mallory edged toward the lieutenant. ‘There was no follow-up?’

‘No! What the hell for? As far as we knew, she was on the way to Bermuda.’

Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope had arrived to give this case his personal attention. He knelt on the floor and rolled the corpse to expose a ruined face for the police photographer.

‘Well, this is different,’ said Heller, and everyone in the room turned to look at the dead woman. Flies crawled among the strands of long blonde hair that trailed from her mouth. The rope’s double knot had snagged on her teeth and pried her mouth open, spreading the lips in a death’s-head grin. ‘Looks like she almost got away.’

Only Mallory was watching Lieutenant Loman’s reaction. His face was pale, and his mouth was slack. This veteran of a thousand crime scenes was about to be sick. He was most vulnerable now, and she stepped closer, her shoulder touching his. ‘So then, the reporters stopped by with their murder tip… and still no follow-up? Sir?’

‘My men didn’t know about that.’ Again, he spoke only to Riker. ‘The desk sergeant never mentioned any reporters. As far as he was concerned, the lady was in Bermuda. He was going off duty, and it wasn’t worth his time to walk up a damn flight of stairs and talk to us. I promise you, his head’s gonna roll.’

Ah, too late.

Mallory perused the folder. ‘We need more men to work this case.’

‘Well, now you guys got two more. Just tell me – ’

‘Three,’ said Riker. ‘Make it three. You came up one short the last time you promised her some help.’

‘You got it,’ said the lieutenant. ‘We’re finished?’

Riker nodded, giving a man who outranked him permission to leave. Loman turned on his heel and started across the room. Mallory wondered if he would make it to the street before he vomited.

Dr Slope supervised the removal of the body, then remained behind to study a drawing of the apartment floorplan. Heller squatted next to the victim’s fallen purse and began to draw another diagram on his sketch pad, noting all the scattered items and their positions.

Mallory knelt beside him and studied the objects around the purse. ‘Looks like a struggle.’

‘No.’ Heller drew black crayon circles around the fallen items. ‘It’s a nice tight pattern. These things just fell out when she dropped her purse. The way I see it, she was standing here when something made her jump.’

Riker stared at the front door. ‘I count three locks and a chain, but no sign of a break-in. This woman was nervous as hell. I don’t see her opening the door for a stranger.’

‘Maybe we’re looking for a cop,’ said Mallory.

‘I wouldn’t rule it out.’ Heller pulled on a new pair of gloves. ‘But I don’t think the door was locked when the perp arrived. This woman was planning a long trip, so she ran some errands after the cops brought her home.’ He picked up a packet of fallen traveler’s checks. ‘A trip to the bank, right?’ Next, he pulled a bottle of pills from a small pharmacy bag. ‘And she refilled this prescription. But she forgot the receipt for the dry cleaner. So she came back to get it.’

Riker pulled out his cigarettes. ‘Is this a guess or – ’ ‘It’s a fact,’ said Heller. ‘The dry cleaner said she dumped out her purse to look for the receipt. But she’d left it at home. I found it on the counter next to the sink. Now remember, she’s got a plane to catch. She plans to grab that receipt and run right out again. So she doesn’t lock the door this time.’ Heller rose to his feet. ‘She’s standing here, reaching for it, when the perp startles her, and she drops her purse. I say he walked in right behind her.’

Click.

Ronald Deluthe snapped pictures of civilians on the sidewalk. He had quickly divided the crowd into categories. The out-of-towners were the people disguised as the Statue of Liberty. Their spiked crowns of green foam rubber were purchases from a street vendor working the crowd with a carton of souvenirs. The visitors smiled as they posed for the camera, then took their own pictures of the young detective with exotic bright yellow hair. He had become a tourist attraction.

All the blase faces belonged to the natives who were almost bored by murder. And lots of them fit Miss Emelda’s loose description of the hangman. T-shirts and jeans were the uniform of this neighborhood, and five of the men wore baseball caps.

Click, click.

The freelance reporters were easy to spot. They were the ones hustling every cop in uniform. The pros with real media jobs were disgorged from vans with network logos. Their technicians were setting up pole lights and carrying cameras. A brunette with a microphone was headed his way. She ignored the officers standing behind the blue saw horses. The woman only had eyes for Deluthe as she worked her way around the semi-circle of barricades – so she could be close to him.

She was pretty. He took her picture.

Click.

The reporter smiled for him.

Click, click, click, click.

She called out to him – a siren song, ‘It’s a murder, right?’

‘No comment,’ he said. This time, the crime scene was under tight control. Even the uniformed officers could not give any helpful information to reporters, however pretty they might be.

Deluthe was out of film and praying that Mallory and Riker would not show up before Officer Waller got back from the store.

He was saved. The uniformed policeman was fast approaching, elbowing his way through the crowd. Perfect timing. There was a God. Waller handed over the back-up film, and Deluthe opened the camera to remove the used roll.

A face in the crowd distracted him. The spectator was staring up at a high window while everyone else watched the front door. The young detective looked up at Kennedy Harper’s fourth-floor apartment. All he could see was blue sky reflected on glass. He reloaded the camera, but before he could snap a picture, his subject slung a gray canvas bag over one shoulder and backed up into the crowd. The bag looked like one in the trunk of Deluthe’s car, where he kept a change of clothes for a baseball game in Central Park.

And now he remembered to shoot the man.

Click.

Shit.

He had only caught the back of the civilian’s head turning away from the camera. Deluthe wondered if he should chase the man down. But what pretext could he use? Excuse me, sir. You looked up instead of down. That scene might not play half as well as his attempted arrest of the building handyman.

The odd spectator was forgotten when Deluthe spied a familiar face behind the barricades. It was the fireman who had left the prostitute hanging at the last crime scene. Gary Zappata’s eyes were fixed on the door to Kennedy Harper’s building.

Waiting for what?

Click.

Detective Mallory stepped out on the sidewalk, followed by her partner. Zappata’s angry eyes locked on to Sergeant Riker.

Click.

The detectives would not give his opinion any credence, but they had to believe a picture. Zappata clearly wanted Riker dead.

Mallory walked up to Deluthe, giving him no time to explain his theory on the fireman. She was saying, ordering, ‘Get out your notebook.’

Deluthe complied, and now his pencil hovered over a clean page.

‘Get your film developed,’ she said. ‘And don’t take any grief. You tell the techs you want it now. Go back to Special Crimes and clear a section of wall in the incident room. Pin up this paperwork.’ She handed him a large manila folder. ‘You’ll find some still shots of news film on my desk. Compare the faces to the ones you shot in this crowd. Meet Riker back here when you’re done. He’ll give you another list. Run.’

No baseball game tonight.

Detective Janos was a human tank, physically and psychologically. Nothing stopped him. However, if Lieutenant Coffey had sent him out in search of the Holy Grail, he would have been back with it long before now. The more difficult errand had been securing a voice recording for the tip line of a local news program.

He was exhausted.

The television people had called him Babe, then misused the word synergy twice in five minutes, saying nothing intelligible for another twenty minutes of wasted time. Everyone on the news staff had labored under the whacked impression that the Constitution of the United States allowed them, even encouraged them, to conceal evidence of murder.

Yet Janos had not killed any of these people. That was not his way. He had merely loomed over the news director, one hand outstretched, saying, ‘Give me the tape.’

Another member of the staff, the anchorwoman, had expounded on freedom of the press, making it clear that she had never read the pertinent passage of First Amendment rights.

And Janos had replied, ‘Give me the tape.’

Half an hour had passed by before the network attorney arrived to yell at his clients, ‘Give him the tape, you fucking idiots!'

More time had been spent convincing an overworked support technician at One Police Plaza that he could not simply leave the tape and go; he needed a copy for his lieutenant. Mere looming had done the trick with the small man in the lab coat.

And now, finally, Janos carried his hard-won trophy down the hall to the incident room. He opened the door and paused on the threshold, taking a moment to admire a crude flat scarecrow nailed to the rear wall. The boys had been busy while he was away.

He looked down at a gray canvas bag near the baseboard. A pair of wadded gym socks had been dropped on the floor, apparently rejected as feet for the image on the wall. Janos agreed with this aesthetic decision – less was more. In the space below a tacked-up baseball cap was a photograph showing the back of a man’s head; this was in keeping with Miss Emelda’s sighting of a suspicious character in her tree, a man without a face. Beneath this picture, a T-shirt had been spread out and pinned to the cork. Sturdy nails supported a pair of blue jeans to fill out the lower half of the body. Crime-scene gloves were positioned where the effigy’s hands would be, and a nail had been driven into one latex palm to hold the strap of a cheap instant camera, yet another detail from Miss Emelda’s description.

Interesting.

However, the truly original touch was a halo of fat black flies impaled around the scarecrow’s cap. One was a large horse fly speared on a long pin, but still alive, twitching, buzzing -

At the sound of footsteps, Janos turned around to see the yellow-haired youngster from Lieutenant Loman’s squad. Judging by the slim build, Janos assumed that the scarecrow’s clothing belonged to this detective. And there was more damning evidence: Ronald Deluthe’s face was flushed red with sudden guilt – perhaps because he carried a living, squirming fly impaled on a hatpin.

‘Deluthe, you’re very young to be this jaded.’Janos smiled at the blushing whiteshield, who now realized that this was a compliment and resumed breathing.

This meeting place had been chosen to increase the prostitute’s anxiety, but Daisy was too stoned to appreciate the decor of framed photographs and citations that screamed, This is a cop bar! Detective Mallory kept fifteen feet of mahogany and five drinking men between herself and the aging whore with electric-red hair.

The skeletal woman perched on the edge of her stool, one eye cocked on the door. Riker was ten minutes late, and the woman would not wait for him much longer. Mallory put on her sunglasses when the hooker glanced in her direction, though it was doubtful she would be recognized; they had both changed so much. Kathy the child had grown into a woman, and Daisy the whore had become a superannuated corpse.

In the old days, this redhead had been a long-haired blonde who had shared heroin with Sparrow. They had done everything together. Mallory had a childhood memory of the two prostitutes vomiting in the same toilet bowl.

Daisy’s bright red mouth formed a suggestive smile for a male customer. The man turned to catch the attention of the bartender, another recent redhead, though, unlike Daisy’s color, Peg Baily’s was a shade found in nature. Also, Baily was softly rounded, glowing with good health, and, in her younger days, she had been a decorated police officer.

The customer arched one eyebrow to ask why a sickly hooker had been allowed to stay so long. Tradition demanded that Daisy be kicked into the street, literally, with the press of a boot on her backside. Peg Baily held up two fingers to let him know that the whore was on the way out in just a few minutes.

Trouble.

This was a new location for the bar. Perhaps it was a coincidence that Baily had moved her business to Riker’s neighborhood, but Mallory thought otherwise.

The bartender looked up at the clock on the wall, then turned to the detective. ‘Your partner’s not gonna show, kid. I’m tossing that hooker out of here right now.’

A whore wasting from AIDS was bad for trade.

Mallory turned to the window – and inspiration. The former Angie Riker was opening the door to a barber shop across the street. Riker’s ex-wife was leading a parade of four teenage boys, the brood of her second husband. Mallory wondered if it was pure accident that her partner had set this time for the interview. Or was he still keeping close tabs on Angie?

The bartender rapped the mahogany to get Mallory’s attention, saying, ‘Time’s up, kid.’

‘Quick question, Baily? You knew Riker when he was married, didn’t you?’

‘You know I did.’ Peg Baily’s eyes were suddenly unfriendly, silently asking, What are you up to? ‘I was his partner. You know that too. What’s this – ’

‘How come you never told him his wife was playing around behind his back?’ As a child, Mallory had learned many things by listening in on her foster parents’ late-night conversations. ‘You knew Angie was a slut. But even after the divorce, you never told Riker. He still doesn’t know you held out on – ’

‘You wouldn’t be threatening me, would you?’ Baily leaned on the bar. ‘I wouldn’t like that, kid. And if you say one word to him, I’ll mess your face up so bad.’

Mallory smiled, for she was younger, faster, and had no healthy sense of fear. Oh, and she was the one with the gun.

Riker had arrived. He stepped out of the car at the curb and watched Deluthe drive off in search of a parking space.

The two women fell into an uneasy silence. The bar’s lighting was low key. Mallory and Baily had no worry of being caught in an act of voyeurism, for Riker was standing in bright sunlight, and the plate glass would act as a mirror. He was slowly turning round, responding to Angie, who hailed him with waving arms. His ex-wife left her children on the curb and crossed the street, dodging traffic and mouthing a happy Hello! As the former Mrs Riker drew closer, Mallory realized that Peg Baily’s new hair color was the exact same shade of carrot red.

Riker faced the window again, pretending interest in the posted hours of his favorite bar as his ex-wife came up behind him. Angie was still a pretty woman, but he would not look at her. She stood beside him, cheerful and chattering, probably asking how he had been – as if they did not see one another all the time. His own apartment was only a block away from hers. However, it was enough that Riker could be near this woman, and that he could see her face every single day; he never spoke to Angie anymore – he never would again. It was just too hard on him.

The woman put one hand on her ex-husband’s sleeve.

Peg Baily’s hands curled into fists.

Riker lost his slouch and stood up straight, rigid and stone silent. He stared at the window, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. Angie’s shrug said, No hard feelings. Then, giving up on him, she crossed back to the other side of the street.

Not wanting to witness any more of this, Peg Baily walked off to fetch a glass of club soda for her ex-partner, who never drank on duty. Mallory continued to watch the man lingering on the sidewalk, staring at his shoes and collecting his sorry wits. She was now convinced that there had been no affair between Riker and Sparrow. He was still in love with his ex. And why would he take up with a whore when Peg Baily was still waiting for her own turn?

He entered the bar and waved to Baily. She started to slide his soda down the bar when he put up one hand to stop her, then ordered cheap bourbon.

More trouble.

He loosened his tie as he sat down beside Daisy, and the hooker promptly ordered a champagne cocktail.

Riker was working on his second shot of bourbon as he listened to the prostitute’s slow drawl, so like Sparrow’s. Years ago, the hookers had been the best of friends, two small-town southern girls against the city. So far, the interview had turned up nothing useful, and now he stirred up a memory of old times. ‘Remember that little blond girl who used to run with Sparrow?’ ‘Wasn’t just Sparrow. That kid used to work a battalion of whores.’ Daisy signaled Baily for another champagne cocktail.

‘What was her name?’

‘Oh, darlin’, she had a lotta names. One hooker called her the Flyin’ Flea, and Sparrow called her Baby.’

‘And you?’

‘Hey Kid – that’s what I called her. First time I ever saw her was in a crackhouse.’ The hooker paused to inhale her drink. ‘She came in lookin’ for Sparrow. What a dirty little face. And those eyes – tiny green fires, but so cold. Nothin’ warm and cuddly ‘bout that little girl. And mean? Oh, darlin’, you got no idea. Ah, but her face – I saw it when it was clean. God don’t make angels that pretty. But I don’t mean to say that God made her. I don’t blaspheme. My mama raised me better.’

This was going to take a while. Riker had no idea how Daisy made a living on the city streets, where time was money. She hailed from a more temperate climate, where customers and cops could wait around all day for a whore to finish a thought.

‘So, like I was saying, I’m in this crackhouse, and I hear a noise in the dark. At first, all I see is her eyes – cold, empty. Scary eyes. That little girl had no soul. She comes up to me and hands me a cigarette case – real silver. And she gives me this ratty old book with cowboys on the cover. Not my taste. Well, she swipes away the needles and trash so she can sit down beside me. Then she kicks out one little foot to make the rats run. And she says, „Read me a story.“ She don’t say please, nothin’ like that. Just says, „Read me a story,“ like that’s my job in life.’

‘So the kid couldn’t read?’

‘Oh, yeah, she could,’ said Daisy. ‘Better’n me. She helped me with the hard words. But that night – that first time – she lays her head down in my lap and waits for her story to begin. So I read till she fell asleep. Then I sat up all night long to keep the rats away from her. I had to, don’t you see?’

Riker nodded. ‘You were her mother that night.’

‘Other nights it was other whores – when she couldn’t find Sparrow.’

Riker looked up from his drink. Mallory sat at the other end of the bar. If she lowered the dark glasses, would Daisy recognize her? Not likely, but the long green slants of her eyes had never changed. They might spook a whore who believed in ghosts.

‘So you looked after the kid,’ said Riker.

‘Sometimes,’ said Daisy. ‘Well, she could never count on Sparrow. That junkie whore was always gettin’ stoned and wakin’ up in strange places. Lucky the kid knew how to fend for herself.’

Yeah, what a lucky little girl.

Sometimes Kathy had lived out of garbage cans, finding a cold supper there. ‘You remember the day Sparrow got stabbed?’

‘Oh, darlin’, I’ll never forget. I went to the hospital to visit. The kid was there, too. Poor baby, she fell asleep sittin’ bolt upright on the edge of Sparrow’s bed. Too tired to lie down or even fall down. That’s the last time I saw the kid alive.’

‘Remember anything else? Did Sparrow say who stabbed her?’

The hooker was wary now.

‘Hey,’ said Riker, ‘I don’t need a witness. That stabbing is old history. This is a personal thing, okay?’ A twenty-dollar bill slid across the bar. ‘Do you know who stabbed her?’

‘I’d be guessin’.’ The prostitute’s hand closed over the money. ‘Only guessin’ – hear me? Sparrow might’ve mentioned Frankie D. You remember that twisted little bastard?’

Riker nodded. Frankie Delight had been that rare drug dealer who was not strictly cash-and-carry. ‘So Sparrow was trading skin for drugs?’

‘No, she’d never do that freak for a fix. I don’t care how bad she was hurtin’. No, darlin’, she was tradin’ brand-new VCRs. Still in the cartons. One of Tall Sally’s jobs went wrong and – ’

‘I know that story,’ said Riker. And ten-year-old Kathy Mallory would have been on the stealing end of that arrangement.

The great VCR heist.

He remembered the report from Robbery Division. A patrolman’s log had mentioned sighting suspicious persons in the vicinity of the crime, among them a little blond girl with green eyes. Lou Markowitz had read him the details, then said, in a tone between awe and pride, ‘The kid robbed a damn truck.’

Daisy nudged Riker’s arm to call him back to the world, asking, ‘Whatever happened to Frankie?’

Riker had never been certain until now. ‘I heard he left town.’ One could say that the dead were way out of town. ‘So, Daisy, what’s Sparrow been up to? You guys keep in touch?’ He doubted that this whore read the papers, and her television set would have been pawned long ago to buy drugs.

‘No, we don’t talk no more.’ She stared at the bottom of her glass. ‘Not for a long time. But I did hear a rumor today. Some bitch told me that Sparrow was the hooker who got herself strung up last night. Well, I knew that wasn’t true. My Sparrow got clean – kicked them drugs. And she stopped liftin’ her skirt for a livin’. That was years ago, darlin’. Years ago.’

He gave her another ten dollars. She snatched it from his hand, then climbed down from her bar stool and backed up all the way to the door, eyes trained on Peg Baily. Daisy whirled around and fled, rather than risk an injury by staying a second too long.

Riker ambled toward the end of the bar, where his partner waited, attracting stares from every man in the room. He sat down beside her. ‘Well, that was a waste of time. We’re not gonna find a stalker with hookers. Sparrow got out of the life years ago.’

Mallory the unbeliever shook her head. She would not seriously consider any good thing said about Sparrow.

Once a whore, always a whore?

‘How did it go with the theater group?’

‘That was a dead end,’ said Mallory. ‘Sparrow was a last-minute substitute in the play. None of those people met her before the rehearsal. And that was the day she was hung.’

‘Well, somebody got her that job. We might find a tie between Sparrow and Kennedy Harper.’

‘No, Riker. This wasn’t a Broadway production. She answered an ad posted on a supermarket bulletin board. The director gave her the part because she showed up in costume and knew all the lines.’

Riker tried to imagine Sparrow memorizing Chekhov. He drained his shot glass and laid his money on the bar. ‘So what’s next? Morgue time?’

‘No, Slope’s working on a fresher corpse right now.’

‘Okay,’ said Riker. ‘A local cop, Waller, looked over your videotape. He gave Janos a name and address for the man in the T-shirt and jeans. You know that big church on Avenue B?’

‘A priest?’

‘You got it.’ Riker stared at his empty glass, turning it over in his hands. ‘If you want off this case, I can work it alone.’

‘No.’ She gathered up her car keys, then left an obscene tip on the bar. ‘I’ll see it through.’

The East Village park was full of music, rock and rap, Hispanic and soul. It poured out of radios and CD players. Some youngsters sported earphones, and Riker had to guess their songs by the cadence of their struts, their bounces and glides.

At the heart of Tompkins Square was a stellar memory of the night his father had thrown him out of the house – an elegant solution to the problem of a teenager’s dissident music. Young Riker had waged a showdown in the old band shell, the spot claimed by another boy, whose music had been a self-portrait, cool and dark, a jazz riff played on a clarinet. Riker had shot back a volley of rock ‘n’ roll, louder and longer. And they had dueled awhile before laying down their instruments.

After a bloody fight, each boy had won his cuts and bruises. And after too many beers, they had ended the night blind drunk, arms wrapped round each other for support, one musically discordant creature in a four-legged stagger walk.

How he had loved those days.

Startled pigeons flew up in the wake of a passing boom box. Riker put out his cigarette and returned to the church, where he discovered that Mallory’s plan to torture a priest had somehow gone awry.

The church was no cathedral, but it held all the trappings of stained-glass windows, a giant crucifix and rows of votive candles blazing at the feet of plaster saints.

Mallory had laid out twenty dollars for a disposable camera just to rattle the priest, and the man’s laughter was a disappointment. He liked the idea of taking part in a photo lineup of murder suspects. ‘No, don’t smile, Father,’ she said. ‘So Sparrow belonged to your parish?’

‘Now how did you manage to make that sound like a guilty thing?’

Father Rose was having entirely too much fun sparring with her in this novel departure from a priest’s workday. She doubted that he would make her short list for a double hanging. She glanced at Riker, who sprawled in the front pew, waiting to play his role of the easygoing policeman, everybody’s friend.

Mallory lowered the camera so the priest could see her slow grin. She had a repertoire of smiles, and this one made people nervous. ‘A witness can place you at the crime scene last night.’

‘Yes, there was quite a crowd – even before the fire engine showed up.’ The priest turned to the side. ‘Want a profile?’ He froze in position, waiting for the flash. ‘Your witness is an old woman. Am I right? Very thick glasses? She was sitting in the window across the street, watching the whole show, and – ’

‘A show? Is that how you saw it, Father?’ She shot him again. ‘Why were you at the crime scene? Forget something?’

‘So I am a. suspect.’ He seemed almost flattered.

‘You were out of uniform last night.’

‘I leave the collar home when I work at the neighborhood clinic. I donate my time three nights a week. Mostly bandaging cuts, dispensing aspirins – that kind of thing.’

She looked up from the camera so he would have no trouble reading distrust in her eyes. ‘I want names. Who can vouch for your time – say an hour before the fire?’

‘The nurse who runs the clinic. We were leaving together when we heard the fire engines. Is this – ’

‘When did you talk to Sparrow last?’

‘Sunday, but I didn’t – ’

‘Did she mention any enemies? Somebody out to get her?’

The priest shook his head.

‘No? You don’t know or you won’t say? Want to lawyer up, Father? You have the right to an attorney during – ’

‘That’s enough, Mallory.’ Riker rose from the pew, acting the part of an annoyed superior. ‘Go check out his story.’

She walked down the altar steps, passing her partner as he climbed upward in dead silence. Riker was already departing from the script. There was nothing amiable in his face as he squared off in front of the priest. Mallory stayed to watch.

‘I know you tried to get access to that crime scene,’ said Riker. ‘My witness is no old lady. He’s a big hairy fireman.’

‘Yes, he must be the one who told me Sparrow was dead. Well, she’s Catholic. She was entitled to last rites.’

‘The fireman said you knew her name before the cops identified her. You knew that was her apartment. So you’ve got what – two hundred people in your parish?’

Father Rose wore a slightly pained expression. He understood that this was a test. ‘I recognized her face when – ’

‘So you had a good view of the show, right? Front row – close to the window. Notice anything unusual?’

‘The hair jammed in her mouth?’ The priest was rallying, almost smug. ‘No, too obvious. That made headlines, didn’t it?’ He folded his arms. ‘You must mean the candles. I don’t recall any mention of them in the newspaper.’ Father Rose waved to a nearby alcove that housed a plaster saint and a few small flames burning among tiers of candles. ‘Like those. Yes, I saw them in the water.’ His smile was wider now. ‘But Sparrow’s were red. Mine are white.’

So Father Rose had failed to notice a thousand dead flies spread on the water. At least one crime-scene detail was secure.

The priest was smiling, triumphant.

‘Having fun, Father?’ Riker moved closer, forcing the other man to back step. ‘Sparrow is a friend of mine, and I’m not enjoying this much. So do me a favor and stop grinning at me.’

Father Rose’s head snapped back, as if the detective had sucker-punched him – and he had. Riker backed off a few paces to reward the priest’s more somber attitude. ‘Maybe we have a religious connection. How would you explain all those candles?’

‘Well, they weren’t for ambience.’ And lest Riker take this for humor, the priest hurried the rest of his words. ‘All the lights were on in Sparrow’s apartment before the firemen broke the – ’

‘Why do you light candles?’

‘Ritual.’ The man was not so sure of himself anymore. ‘Burnt offerings. A light in the darkness. Hope?’ This last word waned to a whisper as he watched the detective descend the stairs.

Riker’s back was turned to the priest when he asked, ‘Did you know Sparrow was a prostitute?’

Mallory watched the priest’s stunned reaction. He opened and closed his mouth like an air-drowned fish. And she knew he could tell them nothing more, not even if he violated every secret of the confessional. Sparrow had never confided in him. The two detectives walked down the wide center aisle, then paused at the sound of running footsteps.

The priest called out, ‘Wait!’ He hurried from statue to statue, lighting all the wicks. ‘Just another minute. Please.’ He lit every candle on the altar as well. ‘I’m sorry.’ The priest walked toward Riker. ‘So sorry. Sparrow is a special person to me.’ His face showed deep contrition. ‘She has a good heart – better than most. She’s better than she knows.’

Riker nodded and cracked a smile, raising his opinion of this man who could admire a whore.

‘And I was wrong about the ambience,’ said the priest. ‘Maybe that 15 your angle. Candles make for great theater – even when all the electricity is turned on. Look around you.’

Candles flickered beneath the crucifix. The man on the cross writhed in an illusion of lights. And all along the wall, flames beneath the other figures created animation, action – actors.

‘Thank you, Father.’ And Mallory meant that. His idea was worth consideration, but from a different angle. What if religious candles had the same significance as a jar of dead flies?